The US legal system seperates civial law suits from criminal law.

Criminal law applies punishment based on what laws were broken. This usually includes fines, and may include punishment such as license suspension and jail time. If he had been drunk when he hit the motorcyclist, he'd probably be in jail now. But texting isn't treated the same way, so the punishment isn't severe. The fines here are probably along the lines of 'distracted driving, resulting in bodily injury.' The facts of this case are probably simple, and the driver probably plead 'no contest.'

Civil law comes into play when you've harmed someone. Civil law seeks to make the harmed party whole, and put a $$$ figure on both tangable losses (motorcycle is broken, and can't work) as well as intangable losses (the riders are emotionally traumatized.) This case is going to be a big battle, because they need to determine the level of liability, as well as what is just compensation. The end award will probably be hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars. Civil court cannot directly send someone to jail.

Criminal law is a crime against the people, and prosocuted by the DA. Civil law is about injury to the plaintiff, and is usually prosocuted by the plaintiff's lawyer.

When the US government bombs an enemy military structure, we issue a triumphant press release. When an anonymous US citizen bombs a US military structure we release the hounds.

Slashdot complains a lot that the US justice system doesn't seem to understand how to apply existing privacy and copyright law to the internet... And we can't seem to figure out how existing forign policy might apply to the internet. Nice. :)

If someone gets beat to shit because they are an asshole, I can avoid the same fate by not being an asshole.

If someone is beat to shit because of their skin color, I cannot change my skin color to avoid the same fate.

Agreed and understood. But, most of the employees who have stock cannot sell it, and those that can sell probably won't. As it stands, it seems like FB really can't go lower than it is, right now.

I've seen a few comments suggesting that the failure for the stock to rise above the IPO price is a sign that the stock was right priced at the opening.

I don't understand this statement. Is it possibe for the stock to go significantly below the IPO price at this point? I'm sure that the employees with stock options are locked in, and unable to share. Not sure if similar agreements exist with the early investors, but I suspect they do.

How is this right pricing? Seems like the stock really can't go any lower.

A lot of variants of the '96 StarTAC were produced, and it continued to sell through the early 2000s, if I recall correctly.

I'm glad they are doing this. I'm currently paying ~$100 a month, and the only reason I keep Verizon is that I'm not on contract, and I have an unlimited plan that would be impossible to replace if I cancelled.

I've been with Verizon since owning a Motorola Startac. Killing the unlimited plan should make the switch to another provider painless.

I'm not convinced that there are significantly more theaters now than there were 10 years ago. If anything, they seem to be closing.

As I recall, we faught the king because we were being taxed without political representation...

A slightly better indicator is to compare opening weekends against the inflation of ticket prices.

http://boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm

By these measures. Titanic's inflation adjusted opening was only ~$50,000,000, inflation adjusted.

I also looked at Lord of the Rings, Avatar, and Gone with the Wind. Adjusting for inflation, none of them even came close to the Avengers.

I highly suspect that these are the same people who will end up watching the movie at 60fps on their 1080p TV, when it finally hits blue-ray.

Honestly, this is a pretty standard pavlovian response.

If you are allowed to skip the crap at the beginning of the game, it'll make the game less cinimatic.

God has no image, and it's form is the universe itself.

Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse Tyson points out that the 4 most common elements in the universe in order of prevelence are Hydrogen, Oxygen, Helium, and Carbon. The 3 most common elements in our bodies are Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Carbon, in that order. We are very much made in God's own image.

(Helium is inert, so our body really can't use it for anything other than "making our voices sound funny.")

The physical differences between Asian, Aferican and European decendents exist because of the time it took for our species to propogate around the world, isolation, enviornmental factors, boarders, politics, and the slow speed of travel at the time.

In the forseable future, humanity may spread to other planets via generation ships with pressures not unlike those faced by our genetic ancestors. The limited communication between colonies, limited travel opportunities, and enviornmental pressures between habited planets will probably mean that humans on distant stars will begin to take on traits that are very different than those of us who live on earth.

It's entirely plausable, and even likely, that as humanity spreads around the stars, we will evolve into something not unlike the aliens of star trek. In the future, there just might be a green woman out there waiting for you - someone Alian, but also someone human.